Let's Play Every GameCube Game, Part 2
All-Star Baseball 2003 (Acclaim Studios Austin/Acclaim Sports, 2002)
It's a bit better than the last one in that the graphics are improved and the announcers have situational and player-specific lines. But sometimes those lines fire in the wrong situations, and the graphical improvements haven't extended to fixing the weird flow of the animations. On top of all that, the control scheme isn't intuitive at all.
All-Star Baseball 2004 (Acclaim Studios Austin/Acclaim Sports, 2003)
This version mostly fixed the animation issues and continued to give the announcers more personality. They went with low-res gifs of real people for the crowd, almost like in Cruisin' USA, which looks good except for the fact that most of them are wearing hats for teams that aren't playing. Quick play had me bat for both teams, which is not something I've ever seen before.
Amazing Island (Ancient/SEGA, 2004)
A monster battler where battles are really Mario Party-esque minigames. It seems like a really neat idea, but it reviewed badly because the games don't stay interesting and the story can't make up for the slack. You can tell that the Age of Brown Everything was about to come, because some complained that the game had too many primary colors.
American Chopper 2: Full Throttle (Creat Studios/Activision, 2005)
If you're wondering what happened to AC1, it only came out on PC/Xbox/PS2. The sequel is still based on a forgotten mid-2000s TV show and features what I can only assume are the real characters putting in vocal performances with all the energy of someone who was dragged out of bed at 3 AM. The amazingly unresponsive motorcycle controls aren't much better.
Animal Crossing (Nintendo, 2001)
Everyone knows what this is, so my contribution here is just providing a good town name. It honestly still looks great for a twenty year old game, but there's basically no reason to play the GameCube outing over more recent releases in the series.
Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt (Warthog Games/Ignition Entertainment, 2005)
A fairly generic licensed collectathon. Faces look terrible, but the environmental graphics have aged decently well. I appreciate that they got the real voice actors for their characters, so everyone sounds like they're in the show.
The Ant Bully (Artificial Mind and Movement/Midway, 2006)
Forgotten licensed platformer tied to a forgotten knockoff movie. It features awful jittery animation and confusing level design, plus every shade of brown you could ever want.
Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis (Lucky Chicken Games/TDK Mediactive, 2003)
This is widely considered one of, if not the, worst games on GameCube, and I can see why. It plays like a barely-graphically improved Superman 64 with occasional interruptions for awful button-mashy combat. There are invisible walls everywhere, and I don't need to tell you how bad the draw distance is because you can see it cutting out in that screenshot.
Army Men: RTS (Pandemic/3DO, 2004)
A base-building RTS from the Army Men franchise. It's not as bad as a lot of these games were, probably because they got a respected developer to make this one, but it's still not really something I'd ever recommend. The GameCube isn't a great RTS platform to begin with, and unintuitive controls and an overly zoomed-in camera just make it even worse.
Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions (Wide Games/3DO, 2003)
It's the helicopter shooty game I played on GBC, but now in 3D on GCN. You fight the same enemies over and over again and there's no strategy involved, so it gets boring and repetitive in the first few minutes.
Army Men: Sarge's War (3DO/Global Star Software, 2004)
3DO went bankrupt before finishing this gritty reboot of Army Men, so it was finished by Global Star. It's an awful third person shooter where everything is indistinct and brown and taking damage is inevitable.
Asterix & Obelix XXL ( Étranges Libellules/Atari Europe, 2004)
The first PAL exclusive on the list is another Asterix game. This one is a collectathon platformer with some basic brawler combat. It seems basically fine, but I don't like the jittery way it's animated. I know that fits the aesthetic and all, but it doesn't look good and the camera has a hard time keeping up.
ATV: Quad Power Racing 2 (Climax Group/AKA Acclaim, 2003)
ATV racing game that doesn't control particularly well or look particularly good, but is otherwise basically fine. Because this is Acclaim, it of course has one female rider who is almost completely naked, but oddly all the others have full helmets and reasonable ATV gear.
Auto Modellista (Capcom, 2003)
An arcade-y racing game from Capcom. I really like the cel-shaded look it has going, but the car controls are very slippery and you'll be spinning out on corners constantly if you're not careful. I prefer not to have to deal with that, personally.
Avatar: The Last Airbender (THQ, 2006)
A very basic brawler based on the TV show. It runs like crap on my setup, but combat is so simple that I'm pretty confident I'm not missing anything.
Backyard Baseball (Humongous Entertainment/Infogrames, 2003)
I played a ton of the GBA version of this series and a bit on PC, but I'd never actually seen the GCN version before. It's uglier than I remember the others being and the batting controls are much too sensitive, plus the cartoony background style they went with feels like it's from another game.
The List:
1080° Avalanche